Clublife

An online journal of the nightly (and daily) nonsense endured by a (former) bouncer at two of New York's most popular nightclubs.

Monday, July 31, 2006

Working it out

You'll have to bear with me for the duration of this post, because I'm wondering about something and I need to figure a few things out. What I'm trying to do here is work my way through a problem. As of right now -- first paragraph, third sentence -- I'm stumped. So what I want to do -- since I'm so much better with the written word than I am in real life -- is apply a solid measure of my patented "flawless logic" to this thing that's been gnawing at me lately. Bear with me like I'm asking, and I'll try and take this somewhere by the end.

"Hey, listen. People gotta know they can't get away with that shit here. They gotta know we ain't targets. Some guy comes in here and does somethin' like that, and we don't do nothin', that shit gets around."

"Gets around with who? People talk about this shit? Who talks about this shit? Why would anyone talk about this shit? Why would people assign any degree of importance to what goes on in a club?" Yes, I said that. I said "degree of importance" to another bouncer. Sometimes we talk like that.

"You think people don't know?" he asks. "Look what happened with that motherfucker. You see him come anywhere near me? He don't do shit when I'm around, 'cause he knows not to. Guys like that, they ask around, an' they know who not to fuck with."

Now if I understand this correctly, people talk about the club outside the club. Like, when the club's not open, they get on the phone and talk to each other about the club, and about what goes on at the club. If Ray is to be believed, they talk about specific bouncers. They discuss which bouncers are to be avoided, and which are pussies or willing to look the other way. They analyze incidents that happen at the club, and bouncer reaction to these incidents, and they grade us accordingly -- both individually and as a staff.

If I'm reading things right, they do this because it's their intention to come to the club to start problems. They know they're going to be doing something unacceptable before they ever set foot in the club. Days before, if they're talking about us amongst themselves.

"Yo, don' fuck aroun' at Opus 22, yo. They gon' bus' a cap, yo!"

I wonder if my name -- or one of my names, or some unflattering physical description -- comes up during any of these conversations. I wonder if my perception of myself, and my bouncing skills, matches what they've said about me. I'd like to think I've gained their respect over the years. I'm lenient, I don't "bust balls," and I don't "put the squeeze" on regulars at the door. When things break out, however, I'm a missile. If you're deserving, I'll readily take a shot at you, and I couldn't give two shits if you're looking or not. People have seen this, so when I talk, they tend to listen.

I'm not a dick, but I'm not the one you want to fuck around with. I wonder if they say that. Likely as not, they don't. Who knows? I know for sure my name doesn't come up on any list of potential "marks," because the only customer who has ever gotten over on me was female, and the only reason she got over was because she was beautiful. She sat on my lap, stuck her cleavage in my face and scratched the back of my head in order to gain access to a bathroom. If she'd called her slew of hot friends and told them to try the same move, I wouldn't have protested, and they'd have beaten my system as well. Everybody wins.

Still, the fact that people talk about this shit at all is a mystery to me. Clubs are supposedly in business so people can come in and drink, dance, meet people and have a fun night out with their friends. I can't remember ever calling "Clint" and suggesting we go to a particular spot because the bouncers wouldn't fuck with us. This is probably because when we did go out, we were more concerned with getting drunk and getting laid than with wreaking havoc on the security staff.

"Guys like that, they ask around..."

Ask around about what? And why? People actually do research to find out which bouncers to avoid when looking to cause problems? From this, it can be inferred that these people know beforehand that they'll be starting some sort of shit, so let's look at this logically.

Problems at nightclubs are caused by three things, and three things only: women, money and stupidity. People start fights over women because they're drunk, or because the person who committed the transgression they're railing against is drunk. Stupidity is also caused primarily by drunkenness, which leaves money as the lone major remaining cause which can't be attributed to impairment.

Disputes over money -- at least, theoretically, the ones stemming from "malice aforethought" -- involve drugs. They have to. If you're fucked up and arguing with a bartender because you're too drunk to know the price of a drink, that's one thing, but if you have something planned before you even set foot in the club, and that something is financially motivated -- else, why would you act out? -- it has to involve drugs. For me to think otherwise would be naive, much as I'd like to think I'm working in a relatively "clean" environment -- "clean," because as bouncers, we're perpetually, and futilely, trying to avoid the unavoidable, by order of management.

So what happens, I think, is that people who want to "move product" do their research. Nightclubs are a perfect place to engage in the trade, and it's good business to find out beforehand where you can and can't fuck around. It makes sense to me, and it's the way I'd handle things if I were a drug dealer. Or an addict.

There is something that trumps all this, however, and that's the propensity -- in any statistical sampling -- for a segment of any given population to suffer from psychological problems. This can't be discounted, especially since nightclubs have a tendency attract the mentally ill by the truckload. Maybe it's the flashing lights or the lasers. Or perhaps it's the music, which I've heard Dante had commissioned as the soundtrack to the inner ring of the Seventh Circle of Hell.

I know for a fact that there are people who come to nightclubs to start fights. There are people in clubs who run to fights with the sole intention of sucker-punching someone. There are people who come to nightclubs to slip things in womens' drinks and rape them. These people are insane, but as is the case with drug dealers, it's good business practice for them to plan ahead. What good is acting on your psychosis if you can't at least get away with it?

So what we've learned here, together, is that people who research the bouncing staffs of bars and nightclubs are either in the business of selling drugs, or they're crazy. I've never "asked around" about bouncers, because I'm neither a drug dealer, a violent loon, nor a rapist. If I sold drugs, assaulted people indiscriminately, or was looking to commit rape, I would likely construct a detailed plan before engaging in these activities. This plan would include "asking around," because I'd want to see my appointed task through without being robbed, beaten or arrested.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Again

For those who live in Manhattan, it's forever been de rigeur to sensitize oneself to the ripple that spreads through a city crowd when someone from the Bridge and Tunnel set enters the room. Grow up in Arkansas, finish school in Nebraska, then get yourself a job answering phones at some two-bit third-tier law firm around the block from Penn Station, but whatever you do, you must live on Manhattan isle, because if you don't, you'll be living amidst the stupid and the accented, and that, my friend, is not what you've come here to do.

It doesn't matter if you have to share some squalid shitbag of tenement space with a junkie in the latter stages of tuberculosis, as long as you're in Manhattan -- or, perhaps, in the areas of Brooklyn that've been annexed by folks of a similar bent. As long as you're where you're supposed to be, even if you've only been there for a month or two, you've got all the license you need to ridicule the likes of me. When you choose disdain, you can't go wrong. Nothing says "I'm down with Gotham" more effectively than a perfectly timed barb at the expense of Long Island or Jersey.

Granted, we are a tacky lot, but we mean well. If you lived where we lived, you'd make the same pilgrimage. That's why you moved into "the city" in the first place, is it not? Then again, I suppose that's the distinction between you and us. You, my friend, are in the catbird seat here. You -- or, in many cases, your parents -- had the wherewithal and foresight to make your home in a place that's important: New York, NY -- the best, most significant address in the whole wide world.

We never thought of all that, growing up where we did. We don't have that capacity for self-examination -- the one that tells us when everyone's laughing. We think we fit in, with our striped shirts and spiked hair, our PATH and LIRR tickets in tow, but we don't. We come out into the night on 7th Avenue, and think we blend. We don't, but we're not aware of it, and so we're all too obvious.

I've worked doors downtown for a while now, and I can see a B&T group for what it is while they're still halfway down the block. Some know the game. When I was younger, before I got back into bouncing, I knew said game all too well, as did my friends. We knew what we were in the city to do, we knew how we were getting home, and nothing was going to happen to us because we were the types of locals who came through the tunnel to exploit the place. We weren't there to be victimized.

Too many don't know this game. They don't remember what the city used to be like in the pre-Giuliani years, when you couldn't walk through Alphabet City, much less find an apartment there. When tires burned throughout the night in Tompkins Square Park, in the days before Times Square became accessible to people from Wichita.

Take the Imette St. Guillen case, for example. St. Guillen's alleged killer, Darryl Littlejohn, supposedly has ties to the "Supreme Team" gang, a Jamaica, Queens "drug posse" whose name, before the murder, I hadn't heard in many, many years. The Supreme Team. I remember -- painfully so -- what Queens was like in the eighties and early nineties, so hearing the Supreme Team name after all these years was enough to make me stop in my fucking tracks. Google it. Google, also, an NYPD officer named Edward Byrne, who was killed by members of the Supreme Team in 1988 while sitting in a squad car in front of the home of an informant. In South Fucking Jamaica, no less -- the same place they found St. Guillen.

Littlejohn. This man was working the door of an upscale bar in the "new" Manhattan. In the "new" New York. Supreme Team. Jesus.

What this all did was make me realize that the New York I remember -- the one in which I grew up, before hipsters could even find Brooklyn on a map -- is still around. Imette St. Guillen collided with the New York I remember. In fact, the owner of The Falls -- the bar at which she was abducted -- is the son of the owner of Dorrian's Red Hand, the place where Jennifer Levin tipped a glass or two the night Robert Chambers tangled with his cat. The karma -- or whatever the fuck it was -- was too strong back then, and we should've known it wouldn't have died, even after New York was steam cleaned and reopened to the world.

When you're Bridge and Tunnel, as Jennifer Moore was, things get a bit dicier. You cross the river, you pay your toll, and you're part of the show until last call. After that, for us, there's a process involved. You need to get home, and home is hardly a short cab or subway ride away. No. It's more complicated than all that. And in the interim -- the time between, when commuter trains are caught, or cars retrieved -- shit happens. When you're young, and from the suburbs, and don't know where to legally park or how to get back to the PATH or the LIRR, you're exposing yourself to 4 am New York -- the Manhattan of Darryl Littlejohn, Steven Sakai and Draymond Coleman. The New York I remember.

That's the New York I know. It's the one that's all around me when I walk out the back door of the club and out into the night. I stopped taking trains to work, because I don't want to be at the mercy of that New York. I can't be, because I know what it can do. I won't ever trust it for a second, and neither should you.

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Plan

"So what are you planning on doing when the new season starts?" asks Ray, sitting on a rail with his feet on the second row of bars.

"As of right now? I have no idea. I really don't."

"You know you're in the group they want back, right?"

"I should fucking hope so," I replied. "Why would they wanna drop me?"

"They're droppin' a lot of guys. I think we're only keepin' like fifteen or twenny guys, and gettin' rid of the rest. JD said he wants to clean house a little."

"Where'd you hear that?"

"From JD. We were talkin' about it on Saturday, when you took off."

"I really don't know what I'm gonna do," I said. "They better promote the living hell out of this place come September, because the crowd that's coming in here fucking sucks."

"Yeah."

"I mean, like, dangerously sucks. Like they're turning over rocks to get people in here."

"That's the way the business works," he said. "You know that as well as anyone."

"Right, but if you're not gonna remodel, or redesign, or open up under a new name, what the fuck does that mean for the crowd that's gonna be coming back after Labor Day? This place has been goin' downhill for like two years already, and it's only gonna get worse if nobody does anything."

"I don't know."

"From what I know about (The Owner's) places," I said, "he usually gives it a three year shot and then moves on, and he's already pushin' it with this shithole. I don't even wanna come to work anymore."

"When did you ever?"

"You know what I mean," I replied. "It's gone from being a job to actually being nervous while I'm here because of this fucking crowd. All anyone gives a shit about is making numbers. There's no more discretion at the door, the front guys aren't making any money, and it's one thing after another at the end of the night because we're letting in so much fucking trash."

"Dude, I talk to guys I know, and nobody has to do the shit we do here. Nobody. You can go through a whole fucking month at some of these other places and never have to even talk to anyone."

"I'll tell you what," he said. "I know for a fact that if it doesn't get better when the new season starts, a lotta guys are out of here."

"I don't blame 'em. I'm probably right behind 'em. It's not worth the risk. They're tryin' to make their numbers at all costs, and we're the ones who have to deal with the shit. And it sucks, because the only reason I stay here is because I know everyone and I feel safe, or at least I used to. I'd rather be out of a job for a couple months, and then come back to a new place. At least that way, we'd get some people in here who aren't fucking ex-cons."

"So which way are you leanin'?"

"I'm gonna do what everyone else is doin', I guess. Wait and see. The thing I don't understand is why nobody from management addresses the problem. I mean, I guess they're gonna wait until we have the big meeting in September and see who's comin' back, but there's shit going on right now, you know? We're havin' major problems every fucking night. Can you remember a single Friday night where the fuckin' cops didn't show up at least once?"

"What the fuck does (The Owner) care?" Ray asked. "It's not like anyone ever looks into the future in this business. He'll call a big fucking meeting after somebody gets killed and tell us all what we did wrong."

"What are you gonna do?"

"It don't matter to me either way. I need the money, and I'm gonna make more here than I will anywhere else. I don't wanna go somewhere else where I have to work with a bunch of guys I don't know, and learn a whole new system, and I can't drink or hide in the back or get away with any of the shit I get away with here. The hours I put in with two jobs are bad enough. I don't wanna make it worse by goin' and bein' the new guy at some other place."

"What are you doin' during the day now? You still with (my old day job)?"

"Yeah," I lied, "plus I got some other shit goin' on, too. I'm doin' better than I was last year. If I quit, I'd be takin' a pretty good hit, but I think I could get by without it."

"You're lucky you don't have kids. I gotta stay doin' this. I don't know if I could ever quit. At least not now, anyways."

"Hey, like I said, it's a big fuckin' hit, but I'd let that money go to have a little peace of mind and get back on a normal schedule for the first time in years, you know? I'm sick of havin' my whole days fucked up worryin' about what's gonna happen at work that night. Maybe I sound like a pussy, but that's what happens. I worry about it, and I don't even wanna come in. I'm gettin' too old for this shit. I don't enjoy the fights and shit like I did when I was twenny-one."

"It's just a job," he said. "You been comin' in here for years, and you're still here. Nothin' ever happens."

"No shit. You don't see me callin' in sick or anything, do you? I'm here, right? My whole problem with it is that I can't shake the feeling that something's gonna happen. I didn't feel like this last year, or the year before, when I needed the money so bad it didn't matter. But now I'm doin' better, and I feel like I got a lot more to lose. I look at the shit I get in the middle of, and I'm not thinkin' about doin' my job anymore. I'm thinkin' about how it's not even worth it."

"You talk to JD about it?" he asked.

"Why should I? I talk to him about this shit, he'll know I'm thinking about leaving, and he's not even gonna wait. He'll just hire somebody else."

"He wouldn't do that to you."

"Sure he would," I said. "And I wouldn't blame him for it. Who the fuck am I? I don't do shit around here anymore. It's a running joke with the door guys. Freddie calls me the 'Innocent Bystander.' I've never been this lazy on a fuckin' job in my life. These people just suck the life outta you."

"You think I do anything here?"

"It's different with me. I was Mister Perfect for the whole time I been here, and now I just don't give a shit about anything. About the only thing I do right anymore is show up on time. But what I'm sayin' is that if you do everything right all the time, and then you start jerkin' off and bein' lazy, everyone notices. I set myself up for it."

"It's not that anyone's complaining. Don't get me wrong with that. I can just tell that JD knows I'm losin' interest. If he's askin' me back in September, it's based on past performance, not on what I've done for him lately, because that adds up to a big fat fuckin' zero."

"It would suck here if you quit. Who the fuck am I gonna talk to? Nobody else here fuckin' hates people as much as you."

"First of all," I said, "I don't know for sure if I'm gone yet. And second, you'll find someone easy. Lot of miserable guys in this business, just like us."

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

No particular reason

Since someone asked...

I don't read many blogs. If I didn't write everything on this site, I probably wouldn't read it. This isn't an indictment of blogs, or of the writing abilities of the blogging public. There are shitloads of people who can write, and many of them put forward some seriously interesting shit, I'm sure. Ironically, however, I don't happen to be a huge fan of the genre.

This is going to come across as arrogant, but what doesn't on this site? It's not intentional in this case. I simply don't like reading anything on my computer screen. I don't have the patience for it. If someone's blog entry starts off slowly, and my attention wanders, that's it. I'm done, and I won't be back for at least a day or two.

It's nobody's fault, really. If blame is to be assigned, let it all fall on me and my inability to concentrate on anything other than myself for more than thirty seconds at a time.

There are plenty of blogs I read regularly, or at least try to. There are a handful I consider required reading. One guy in particular had me caught in a repeating loop for the better part of a year, during which period I clicked on his link at least a half dozen times a day to see if he had updated. Another -- who has since stopped posting, but whose link is still on my "blogroll" -- regularly made me do LOL and ROTFLMAO, whatever the fuck those are. His blog was perfect because he managed to get these reactions with posts that typically ran no more than a paragraph or two in length. Perfect for me.

The only blogs I actively dislike are the ones that chronicle people's drinking exploits. These, I break down into two categories:

A. "The Sophisticate": Rain, with a splash of Dubonnet -- in a martini glass, silly -- at Soho House. And again, and again, and again, in every single post, every single day of every week. Over and over and over, until I'm tempted to go get a bouncing job at some of the places these people mention, just so I can have the pleasure of throwing them out.

"Clint" gave me absinthe once. Ted Breaux is the man.

B. "The Derelict": I don't like reading about other people's drunken evenings. This isn't because these entries are poorly written, or because they're not funny. It's because they're written by amateur "alcoholics," and they describe nothing I haven't seen. You go out, you drink until you throw up, you take home an ugly girl, you embarrass yourself. Wow, man. Never did that before.

Here's where the arrogance comes into play. Having grown up in the "major leagues," I have literally thousands of drinking stories involving me, my friends, and three-quarters of the female population of the northeast United States. Binge drinking in quantities that would make your head spin. Drug abuse -- none by me, fortunately, but I've "been in the room" too many times -- that would make junkies recoil. Fights galore, from well placed Thai kicks on Jamaica Avenue, to Long Beach to Bell Boulevard to Gansevoort to 28th Street to Wildwood to South Beach to Boylston Street to Santa Monica to Sturgis to Frankfurt to a brutal overhand right on High Street, and damned near everywhere in between. More broads than you could shake a stick at, and a vomit-inducing peek at AM3.149806's bare ass creeping down a dingy hallway.

I don't piss or shit myself. I let it out in peoples' closets, then pretend it didn't happen. Vicarious living isn't for me, so I usually skip entries where people write about pissing and shitting themselves. I spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with drunks during the week anyway, so reading about them is just about the last thing I'm looking to do with my "quiet hours."

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

I've been "OWNED"

all you can do is block doorways os u so fatm ugky and useless. If IU was your mum i was would have fuckin aborted you yiou fuckin pieve of worthless shit

I hope you die u cunt

To which I responded with this: (edited version)

Subject:

RE: fuck you

Body:

Do the world a favor and slit your own throat, you piece of chav scum.

You're going nowhere. You're illiterate. You hide behind the internet and become obsessed with other illiterates. Your life will be a miserable failure. You'll never be able to hold down a job. People don't like you. You're very ugly.

You have no hope of carrying out any of your threats because you've never done a days' work in your life. Somebody will eventually kill you because your mouth is too big, and you've never had the balls to say anything to anyone in person, so you don't know what can happen to you.

It must suck to be a piece of shit chav with no future, a borderline (mentally challenged) IQ, and no hope.

And why do people from England listen to rap, anyway? YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT.

How does it feel to be a helpless (mentally challenged slur)?

Which elicited this:

Subject:

RE: RE: fuck you

Body:

Good lord. So just because Midnyte swears Mid's ass off he is a dickriding hip hop faggot. Just by that response alone, Mid sees you are a worthless nobody who is not worthy of such an intelligent response by the 'Sinister One'. You cannot even see my page dicknose, so how thw fuck do you know what Mid listens to in his spare time? Homeless piece of shit

Now listen you infernal no mark fuck - Mid has no need to acknowledge in anyway your asinine drivel. So do not send The Sinister Minister three different fucking replies in the course of a week. A word of advice to you shitburger: Mid has logged into MySpace since and acknowledged some of his messages. So when Mid logs in and ignores puny drivel from little people like you, it does not mean 'Sinister' has not seen it, it means 'The Minister' has better things to do then listen to cockslobbering bollocks by some herb named Robthebouncer. The fact that Mid ignored your unsavoury drivel for over a week until she felt she was patient enough to deal with a worthless bumbaclat known as a 'bouncer', and yet you still harangued the 'Sinister One' with your droning nonsense over the course of a week displays the fact that you are worth neither a reply nor any further attention from Mid, escially as The Sinister One has a real career as a prognosticator of wisdom and dos not have to guard soe two bit joke of an amanetiy namd 'Guido's', becaus eyou are neither intelligent nor articulate enough to do anything else than stand in front of a door. Shit! If Mid hadn't seen you were such a homeless piece of shit, Mid would not have take the liberty of owning your ass whenever possible. Now put your crack down you reptard

Mid has lived abroad - Italy, France, Africa, Korea - and the USA. Mid has friend sin the industry ad how the fuck do you know Mid idn't from the US originally, you stupid stupid herb? So Mid thinks he has some knowledge on the hip hop scene, whereas YOU have never stepped awya from the faggot ass area in Manhattan where your dumb of a club is

Yeah, thats right - REPTARD XD

Now - fuck off, you dicknosed fucktard

And this:

Subject:

RE: RE: fuck you

Body:

Do the world a favor and slit your own throat, you piece of chav scum.

I have no reason to dicknose....I am not the worthless stupid piece of shit cunt known as a bouncer, am I? Hence my post

Furthermore you are a fat AMerican faggot so how in the FUCK do you know about chavs? And you have the chutzpah to ask Mid not to talk about hip hop?

Hyprocrites fury :D

Plus I have a full time job and more friend than you'll ever had. I am smart,m funny, happy, have tons of friends and dont have to kick people out of a clubs for a living

I'll slut your fucking face open for just being a bouncer. All buncers should be gassed accordingly. Because there is no lower scum than some spastic who can only get a job being a meathead who throws cunts out of clubs because he has no other talent for anything else. If talentless fags like you didn't exist, neither would bouncers. You heard it here first :lol:

Whtas kind of dicknosed fucktard accuses somebody of not being liked and hiding behind a computer screen? You know fuck all, Baldy - Shit! You don't even know if I'm male or female, so how the fuck can you accuse someone you ever met, you spastic no brained piece of shit?

Futhermore I get laid more than you, you have never seen my pic, (and with your face you dont have any right to call me ugly) so I dont think you're in any position to call me ugly at all

I am a borderline genius with an 161 IQ. You - a Manhattan bouncer with the intellect of a slipper. . . .for all the reasons I explained above

PS you need to shut the fuck up cos your breath stinks - now guess who said that dicknose and come back to me when you've got at least one thing right, you no-mark homeless piece of shit

I have learned a lot - I have been in jail - yet another thing a spastic like you doesnt know about - LEARNING FROM MISTAKES. So yes, I have had balls to say shit to their face

Come on and give e your address to your skank ass club you fucking worthless useless cunt - I can still contract you so my boy can hgave a place to sleep at night, so go right ahead you cuntflap

If I am illterate, then how the fuck do I know what 'chutzpah' means? To prove that the illiterate stupid fuck here really is (clue, he's a cuntass bouncer from GUIDO'S :lol:) try getting back to 'Sinister' without using Google

'if your names now down you're not coming in'

Retarded spastic - I've never had a days work in my life - you're right. Not for spouting that shite with that suprior faggot ass facial expression on your fat ass face when you throw someone out for wearing earrings. But I have worked for years in numerous job sthat actually make you somebody

Bouncer - you cant do nothing else but pretend to be all tough because you're too thick to do anything else shitburger

Monday, July 24, 2006

I just can't

On Saturday night, I finally figured out what bouncing is all about. Finally unraveled the whole rancid ball of yarn -- rancid, because the ball is like one of those tackified wax-coated strands that leave a film on your fingers, and the film smells like feces. I've been working on this problem for years, stripping away all the layers of bullshit surrounding the heart of this business, and what I found is that the "secret" definition of the job really isn't much of a secret at all.

You stand there, night after night, and you say "no." All you do is say no, until someone folds up a twenty, hands it to you, and compels you to say "yes." So if they pay, it's yes. If they don't, it's no. Those who know the game will pay. Those who don't, won't. Those who don't will stand there and try to convince you that it's in your best interests to say yes, failing to understand that you're nothing but a mercenary, and that there isn't any "nice guy factor" or "common decency factor" in play at nightclubs.

Why do we ever say no? We say no because there's always the possibility of making some money if the person to whom we've said no wants badly enough to alter the course of his evening. We say no because we have authority, backed by manpower, and if you think you can forcibly obtain that elusive yes, you're courting problems. Serious ones.

Most importantly, however, we say no because we're not permitted to say yes. We're functionaries, on the very low end of a hierarchical scale that regards us as expendable. And when management tells me not to let anyone through "X" door without "Y" qualification, I can't override their edicts no matter how many times you ask me to "do you a fay-va" and "hook a n---a up."

This leads us to what I consider the true essence of bouncing. When you do this job, you're given a set of rules. Some of these rules are things we're entrusted to enforce, like not letting certain people into the club, for example, or not permitting customers to walk outside with drinks. The rest of these rules apply to the staff, and involve our specific job performance: Stay in your spot. Don't wander around. Don't get drunk while you're on the clock. And so on.

Armed with this set of rules, you get up on your box and you "bounce." You think you're going to stand there and watch the crowd and look at womens' asses for six hours, but that's not ever how it progresses. Not hardly, because what you'll find is that the crowd is there not to drink and dance and have a good time, but to test you. Specifically you, because that's how bouncing works.

All this fucking job entails is an endless procession of people asking you to let them do things they're not supposed to be doing. Things that can get you fired. Illegal things. Immoral things. And you if you have the temerity to actually do your job the way your employers expect you to do it -- the way they're paying you to -- you're the bad guy. You're the asshole, and now you're going to have to stand there and explain to some drunken, drug-addled jackass why it's a bad idea for you to let him sit in the VIP and smoke weed. Or why you'd like him to put his penis away and stop masturbating to the girls dancing on the stage.

All part of the game, my friend. In fact, it is the game. All night, you'll have customers -- most of whom, disturbingly, have Eastern European accents -- asking you to risk your job for them.

"Because if I let you in, and someone finds out that I let you in, I'll lose my job."

They always say the same thing: "Can't you just let me in?"

Can't you just, can't you just, can't you just? Can't you just let us in after last call? Our friends are inside! Can't you just stamp me? I'll hook you up next week! Can't you just let me in the VIP? My "boys" are down there! Can't you just let me back in? I wasn't even involved! Can't you just slide me some drink tickets? I know Carmine!

Friday, July 21, 2006

Off-peak

I've been taking the Long Island Railroad for years. Again, don't assume I'm from -- or live on -- Long Island simply because I frequently mention the LIRR. Take a look at a map of the system, and you'll see several stations in Brooklyn, and several in Queens. This disclaimer is being issued because every time I mention the LIRR on this site, I get the same slew of shitheaded emails telling me I'm "unqualified" to talk about living in the city because I don't take the subway to work.

I don't know why I get so defensive about this anyway. There's nothing inherently wrong with living on Long Island, or being from Long Island. Unless, of course, you actually find yourself on Long Island and can't get the fuck off Long Island. As I've said before, the only thing I don't understand about people who live on Long Island is why they'd ever want to remain in a place so bereft of anything worthwhile. It's an overcrowded bedroom community, and that's all it is. It's a plainfaced suburban nothingland that's no different from Orange County or Grosse Pointe or the Inland Empire -- whatever the fuck that is -- or anywhere else where people drive white Escalades and hire teams of illegal immigrants to walk around with gas-powered leaf blowers and discharge clouds of dusty compost into the street for me to run my car through, middle finger extended.

In any case, I took the Long Island Railroad the other night. The ticket window at the station was closed, and both automatic ticket machines were broken. When you buy a ticket on board, the conductor is required to charge you an extra $5 or so, no matter what type of ticket you're purchasing (peak, off-peak, one-way or round-trip). I explained to him that the machines were down, and he said he had to collect the surcharge regardless, but that I could write the LIRR's main office and request a refund. Fine. I paid.

He took out an on-board ticket, punched it full of the requisite holes, and slipped it into the ticket holder atop the back of the seat in front of me. As he was walking away, I pulled it out of the holder and put it in my pocket. The conductor, seeing this, reversed field and walked back toward me.

"Why'd you take that out of there?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"Why'd you take your ticket off the seat? That has to stay there."

"Can't you just put a seat check there?" I asked. "I'd rather not leave my ticket out."

"Why not?"

"You really wanna know?"

"Yeah," he replied. "I really do."

"Because when I was in high school, I was taking a train home from Manhattan, and somebody snatched my ticket off the seat, and you guys kicked me off the train at Jamaica, thinking I didn't have a ticket, and my father had to come and pick up the only two fifteen-year-old white kids in the middle of Jamaica station at midnight because we didn't have enough money left on us to get home. That's why I don't want the ticket on the seat."

"But there's nobody on this train."

"Dude," I said, "I don't wanna be an asshole, but if you're gonna bang me eleven bucks for a five mile train ride, the least you could do is let me make sure nobody steals the goddamned ticket."

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Sometimes

I have no influence anywhere. None whatsoever. I wait in lines. I pay cover charges -- hypothetically speaking, of course. I don't know anyone, anywhere, nor do I ever claim to. If I can't do something on my own merit -- or with whatever's sitting in my wallet -- I'm pretty well fucked. If you're with me, and you don't know anyone, we're not getting in.

The irony here is that I'm actually in the nightclub business -- have been for quite a while, as you're all aware -- and I still don't know a soul. During the course of my nearly three-year-long bouncing "comeback," I've been in some fairly prominent bouncing positions. I've worked a busy high-profile door. I've been among the central figures in a handful of well publicized -- within the industry, at least -- incidents. There are some serious, dyed-in-the-wool "club celebrities" who'd easily recognize me if they saw me walking down the street out of "uniform." Whether they'd acknowledge me or not -- or I, them -- is beside the point. I may be anonymous here on this site, but I'm not a complete non-entity in nocturnal Manhattan.

Still and all, I can't get us in. I won't namedrop, for I've no names to drop. None that count, anyway. Take me to any club worth a shit in New York, and I'm sure I'll know somebody. I have a nice little constituency to my credit amongst club promoters here, because I have a history of "taking care of" their people at the door without asking for anything in return. I don't ask people for reciprocals when I do things for them, because that entails forming relationships, and relationships are hardly what I'm looking for in the nightclub environment. I've done well thus far without them. Relationships with people who aren't bouncers are favor-based, and I don't want to enter into anything with people who carry scorecards. Scorecard-carriers, you'll find, are just the sort of people with whom you're bound to become entangled should you open yourself to the possibility.

Despite all this, I still know nobody. What I'm referring to here is really knowing people to the point where I'd drop their name in order to get something. The same is true of most people. Nobody fucking knows anyone in New York. The difference between "them" and "me," however -- and this is how I'll continue breaking the world down until further notice -- is that I'll turn around and go home if anyone calls my bluff. Then again, I won't ever make the bluff play in the first place. The size of your penis has no bearing on the size of mine. If yours is bigger, I'll simply congratulate you and let the matter rest. I won't stuff a sock in my pants in order to press the issue. Unlike many, I don't maintain an unjustifiably high opinion of myself and my "pull."

Unfortunately, that isn't how it works around here. Nobody gives up without a monumentally irritating fight. You're not barring them. They're in. All they have to do is go to the window and pay, and they've got it, but they'd rather stand on the sidewalk for an hour -- in rain, snow, sleet or hail -- until you acknowledge them and whatever bullshit "status" they're claiming.

This is class warfare, orchestrated by people devoid of any. It's a process of subordination, and I've never understood exactly what place such things have in a civilized society. You're out there long enough, dealing with the public, and you learn that the only thing some people want is for you to back down to them. To know your place and subordinate yourself to their stupid fucking whims. There's nothing rational about it after a while, because it eventually has nothing to do with what's utilitarian within a specific situation. It's about breaking other human beings down and making them capitulate.

This is the problem I have with New York. Getting things done is never the issue, no matter how timely your response is, or how much care you put into the work. No matter what service you perform for people here, there's more to consider than simply giving the customer what he's paying for. Everyone requires an ass-kissing of some sort. Nobody's happy until they've won. The transaction is never complete without someone having to eat a jumbo-sized plate of shit, even after the goods have changed hands to everyone's satisfaction. There has to be a yielding of power to go along with it, and it's all just a great big fucking joke to me because I wasn't raised to be a goddamned submissive, a quality that renders me virtually useless in the service industry.

I chafe at this "think who the fuck you are" shit. I always have, and I think it's what makes me an effective door guy. Offer me the requisite lines -- "Apparently, you don't know..." -- and the world tinges red. And who are you, really? Just some lucky motherfucker with a few bills to throw around? Another swinging dick who demands my obeisance because you play make-believe for a living on TV?

Money generates hope for the rest of us. It really does. You can overcome any shortcoming imaginable if you've got enough. You don't have to do shit. Don't have to be anyone worth respecting. You don't have to fight in Iraq, or save a kid from a burning building, or even stay at home in your house and raise your fucking family like a "normal" human being. All you need in New York is a nice stack of cash in your pocket and deference is yours if you're in the right situation to demand it. Which, of course, is any situation when you're an arrogant piece of shit.

What are you when you're a bouncer, anyway? What are you when you subject yourself to this shit night after night, month after month? You're a sucker, is what you are. A pawn. A big, fat, overstuffed pawn in somebody else's fucking chess game where everybody else is making money and you don't have a stake in any of it until you get hurt, or you get fired. That's what nightclub bouncing is all about. That's what it is to be working-class. White trash. Fuck you.

You're a piece of shit, is what you are. Same thing as everyone else trying to make an honest living around here without stepping all over someone else's fucking back. Same as anyone naive enough to have missed the entitlement train when it left the station. Nothing but a piece of shit.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

The Guido Whisperer

Let's quote Roadhouse, shall we?

"If somebody gets in your face and calls you a cocksucker, I want you to be nice. Ask him to walk. Be nice. If he won't walk, walk him. But be nice. If you can't walk him, one of the others will help you, and you'll both be nice. I want you to remember that it's a job. It's nothing personal."

Swayze said that, and Swayze knows his shit. You can't argue with Swayze. If you try, you'll be hearing from me, because nobody fucks around with Swayze on this website. Why would you want to, anyway? Fuck around with Swayze, and the next thing you know, you've got a set of hyperextended knees and he's got his shirt off, and the entire thing's a monumental embarrassment to you and your entire family. So don't. Dalton holds a special place in my heart -- and especially on this site -- and I won't have anyone disparaging the biggest name in the business in order to curry favor with the likes of me.

The man does have a point, though. You do have to be nice, at least sometimes. Conventional wisdom states that bouncers can always stop more trouble with their mouths than with their hands. Even people who've never worked as bouncers will tell you this, because it's a Roadhouse first principle. Of course, it's also one of those things that people will tell you to make you think they're "in the know." It's counterintuitive, so they think they're telling you a secret when they fill you in on this little tidbit. It's not as simple as all that, though.

I'm a tremendously good talker, but only at certain points within a "situation." You want me around at the very beginning, when punches have yet to be thrown, because I'm highly skilled at defusing that sort of thing. I can whisper the Guido off the ledge. I am the Guido Whisperer. I've done this a thousand times, and I can do it a thousand more if you'd like. Show me two or more guys who are about to fight, and I can insert myself into the middle of the problem and make at least one of the parties see the light. This is one of my strengths as a bouncer.

Dalton occasionally wasn't so nice, and the same holds true for me. I'm not always nice. The physical part of bouncing is something I've always been able to handle, because I can hold my own in most fighting situations and I've been in enough of them to know I'm not going to freeze. I've relegated myself to more of a support role lately -- I'm not looking to make a career out of this, you know -- but I'm still around when they need me.

The one thing I can't do is "talk shit" once hostilities get started. I don't know why it happens, but once it's time to lay hands on somebody, I clam the fuck up until it's done. When I'm goaded into saying something to someone, it usually comes out as a stuttered melange of nonsensical profanities adding up to nothing that even comes close to coherence.

"Yo, go FUCK yourself!" is about the best I'm likely to do once I've had to touch someone. "I'll fuckin' KILL you, y-y-you m-m-motherfucker, you!"

Once I start fighting, don't listen to me. Go listen to someone else if you're looking for anything memorable. All I want to do once things reach this point is to get my job done, and that job usually entails getting the best of someone physically. As rank-and-file, that's all they want me to do. I'm lucky on this count, because I'm sure as hell not going to win a battle of wits once my adrenaline's flowing. Others are much better at this. I don't mind. It's not something I've spent much time thinking about until just now.

"Yo," said the Guido, who'd just been wrestled out the door. "Fuck you, muthafucka! You a fat bitch! I'll beat all yo' muthafuckin' asses!"

"You look like a hundred pounds of chewed bubblegum. Shut the fuck up."

The Guido, considering this, paced back and forth. He offered no reply.

"Hey," said Big John, smiling now. "How 'bout I whip my cock out and choke you with that?"

"Yo, you whip...you w-w-whip...yo' cock..." The Guido was struggling.

"Go home, you fuckin' pussy. I take shits bigger than you."

John then went inside and left us to deal with the Guido, who quickly ran out of steam after being so badly overmatched. Verbal judo is hardly the province of the Guido populace, try as they might to convince us it is. He still claimed he wanted to fight, but with a half dozen bouncers between our Guido and the door, and nobody rising to his bait, nothing was going to happen.

This happens every night, and it's almost as if it's all scripted. Trouble is, nobody ever gives me the script to read beforehand. My problem is that I can never do what John did. I don't have a giant repertoire of one-liners at my disposal. I can only prey on the obvious -- appearance, size and lack of intelligence -- and most of my cracks are too straightforward to elicit laughter in the retelling. Nobody notices this, usually, because I tend to keep my mouth shut once things get started, but I notice, and it concerns me. This is something I need to practice.

As we said in "da 'hood," back in "the day," I need to start "droppin' science" on you motherfuckers.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Shit talk

Even within the confines of the minor constellation that is my club, I'm not what you'd call a celebrity. Sure, I'm well known and highly regarded amongst the people with whom I work -- though less so, lately, for various reasons -- but most people coming to the door don't even know my name and never will.

This is because I'm usually going by a fake name. I don't want anyone knowing my real name, because that could lead to things called complications, and since I've spent so much time trying to make my life as simple as I can possibly make it, complications are unnecessary at this juncture.

If you ever let these fuckers know your real name, you're getting yourself on that road to complications. It starts with your real name, segues into interaction, then ends, at times, with breeding. Or interbreeding. Bouncers and customers shouldn't breed. If I did ever start down the path to penetration with any of our disease-ridden customers, I'd be porking them Williamsburgh Style, through a hole in a sheet with a double-lambskin raincoat rubber cemented to The Unit, and Saran Wrap around my tongue, just in case. I'd have to.

Fuck it, man. Look around. When it's four in the morning, and the club's letting out, and we're all standing out on the sidewalk waiting for cabs, take a good hard look around at what's surrounding you. You'll see what I mean, and you'll say what I said on Saturday night:

"These people don't look right."

They don't. They really, truly don't. It's the Island of Misfit Toys, is what it all is. You look around and see all the fucked-up hair and the fucked-up clothes and the fucked-up shoes and you hear the fucked-up accents and you wonder if there are places where normal people go. You dream of normality. "I wonder," you say, "if there's a club somewhere where everyone doesn't look like this."

I wonder these things because I haven't been anywhere else in such a long time. I don't go out anymore, at least not to places anyone would consider "happening" or "trendy." This is partly because I'm not a very "trendy" guy. It's also because the public is tiresome, and when you go to a club in Manhattan, you're getting the public-times-a-thousand. When I go to Bell Boulevard on a Wednesday night, it's me and the bartender and a baseball game, and if I got up and pushed aside some tables and started to dance, he'd whip out a pistol from behind the bar and put one behind my ear. Justifiably so.

It's all simply an exercise now. I'm not sure what, exactly, I'm exercising, but I stopped caring about this job a long, long time ago. I've always disliked bouncing -- sometimes a little, occasionally a lot -- but the one thing you couldn't argue was that I cared. I never knew precisely what I cared about, but there was always something that kept me trying.

To what end? There's no bigger purpose involved when you bounce. All that happens is a loss of faith in humanity, because all you see, all the time, is human garbage. I threw a guy out on Saturday night for putting his drink down on the floor in the middle of a marble hallway. Or maybe it was linoleum. Or granite. Who gives a shit? All I know is that it wasn't carpeted, and it's heavily trafficked, and the guy had to make a phone call and couldn't wait until he made it to the lobby, so he put the fucking thing on the floor. And somebody kicked it over. And then somebody slipped and fell. And the original guy, the one who caused the fucking problem in the first place by not being able to see five seconds into the future, dared me to put my hands on him and take him out.

Fuck you, dude.

I don't do that anymore. A year ago, I may have. Two years ago, definitely. Now? I called for backup. Called the entire front door staff to the lobby to give me a hand. I made the smart play, didn't have to touch the motherfucker, and went about my business. Until...

"Yo, have you seen my girlfriend?"

Another one of these. I want to be able to tell this guy I know who his girlfriend is. I want to be able to say that I'm such a huge fan of his that I can recite all of his warehouse stats by rote. I know exactly how many boxes he had on his hand-truck today because I follow his every move, being such a big fan and all. So, naturally, I know exactly who his girlfriend is, and I've seen her. How could I possibly be watching anyone else when they're here?

"No," I said. "Have you seen mine?" And so on. It keeps going, and he never gets the point, exactly.

Here is the essence of nightclub problems. This, for me, is what it all boils down to:

Our customers are so hideously ugly, frighteningly stupid and blatantly obnoxious that I can't understand how they're not homeless. With all three of these factors working against them, I fail to understand how they earn the money they spend at the club. I can't comprehend how these people make it through the world. You'd think people with such obvious disadvantages wouldn't get anything they want, yet they act as if we owe them everything.

Fighting is a perfect example of this. Can anyone honestly say they don't know why nightclubs employ bouncers? And yet...

What I know is that once this run is over -- this current bouncing evolution -- I won't be able to bounce again. Anywhere. Spend too many nights doing this shit, and your disregard for nightclub people turns to abject hatred. When you're supposed to be a mediator, these feelings don't place you in an advantageous position. It doesn't place you in any position at all. It kind of just makes you stand there and fume and want to spit on people.

Once I'm done, that's the legacy I'll leave. I'll wait until I have a nasty headcold before I quit, and I'll leave them a nice big pile of mucus right there on the fucking sidewalk. Don't slip on it.

Monday, July 17, 2006

Disconnect

"Who's supposed to be working the west door?" asked JD, our fancy head bouncer.

"Miles."

"Where's he at?"

"I dunno," I responded truthfully. "Haven't seen him. Somethin' goin' on back there?"

"I got a bunch of people back there peein' and screamin'."

"Peein' and screamin'?"

"Yeah, dick," he replied. "Peein' and fuckin' screamin'."

Peein' and screamin'. I don't know about you, but I don't think a bouncer is the right man to call if you've caught a gaggle of Guidos "peein' and screamin'," especially when said Guidos are doing both simultaneously. I'm thinking what JD meant was that there was a crowd of people on the side of the club making a great deal of noise, and that some of them happened to be urinating against the wall. I was supposed to be taking offense at this. I'm also thinking that the ones who were "peein'" were not the same ones who were "screamin', because it's silly to do both.

I don't pee and scream at the same time. In fact, loud noises tend to staunch my flow -- stage fright and all -- so I tend to avoid this sort of self-sabotage whilst emptying the contents of mein bladder. I believe the same is true of most men. I suppose it's okay to scream on occasion while taking a dump, but I don't do this because I'm usually too busy reading and don't want to distract myself.

Now, if you take JD's description of the problem in the literal sense -- in other words, someone actually was "peein' and screamin'" at the same time -- you'd have to think Miles was hardly the ideal choice here. Miles, you see, is not a urologist. He doesn't specialize in treating the sort of thing that could potentially elicit "screamin'" during "peein'." Last I heard, Miles was a mortgage broker. He's the guy who calls you around dinnertime, asking about "points" and "fixed rates" and "variable rates" and all that other shit you don't want to talk about while you're trying to get the baby in his chair.

Miles cannot cure the microwave. When the microwave gets hold of "Clint," we call a physician.

I've never understood the point of people getting so bent out of shape about public urination anyway. You unzip, you whip it out -- what's there to whip, I suppose -- and you take care of business. What the fuck have I always been worried about? Sure, the stream can get a little loud if you're standing under somebody's window -- the key is to either wave it around vigorously or piss on sandstone brick, if you can find any in time -- but who cares? What's anyone planning on doing if they catch you?

I'll be damned if I'm actually touching the guy who just pissed in my alleyway. I'll be double-damned if I give a shit about someone pissing on the wall of the club. I suppose you could throw something at them midstream if you're really looking to stop things, or you could sneak up behind them and kick or shove them into the wall. Where I went to school, getting kicked front-first into urinals was commonplace. I only did it to one kid -- once, because he deserved it -- because I wasn't a bully in school. Nobody ever did it to me because I was big for my age, and because my family was crazy. Kids feared retribution. They had foresight. My brother was looming, and kids can't always travel in packs.

Most people who come to nightclubs have older brothers too, because people who come to nightclubs are stupid, and their parents probably didn't know much about contraception. Their parents relied on strange feelings in their loins to guide them. You can observe a group of animals and see the same sort of behavior. The male gets the urge, so he walks over, mounts a female, and begins humping. After he's done fighting with other males who are trying to do the same thing, he offers the impregnated female of the species $500 to "take care of the problem."

This is how club customers are produced. It's easy to mistake the aforementioned process with that of the conception and birth of whatever would result from this.

The point is that I don't fear the older brothers of the customers I've been enlisted to stop from pissing on the wall. The other point is that I have nothing to fear from these older brothers because I've never tried to stop anyone from pissing on any wall. Ever. This is because even though massive parts of my life have involved doing what you'd call "stupid shit," I still have standards. I consider myself above shouting at public urinators. For what I'm being paid, I won't degrade myself like that. If you're not pissing on me or my car, we're all square. Have at it, friend.

But what I like to do sometimes at work, out of sheer intellectual curiosity and to make JD think I'm doing what he's asking me to do, is to actually go investigate.

"Sure, man. I've got it. Let me walk around back and take a look, and I'll figure out who's "peein' and screamin'," and I'll put a stop to that shit toot sweet. Tout de suite. ASAP, before puddles can form."

Of course, I'm hardly ever to be believed anymore, now that my formerly puritan work ethic has gone the way of the leisure suit.

"You want me to take a run back there?" I asked.

"No," replied JD. "Stay up front, and stay off the fuckin' radio."

"Why?"

"Because I fuckin' said so, that's why."

"Jeez," I said. "What the fuck?"

"Listen, asshole, when I want you to do something, I'll let you know. Don't suggest things. You're suggesting shit to me like I didn't think of sending somebody back there to fix the problem. You think I'm a fuckin' moron or something?"

"But you said they were..."

"You wanna go home?" he asked.

"Actually, yeah."

"You wanna go home and only get paid half a night? Izzat what you want? 'Cause that's what I'll do if you don't shut the fuck up."

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Update

Monday, July 10, 2006

Misogyny, redux

One night, we're all standing around at a bar, and some girl waddles up and whispers something in "Clint's" ear. I would never think anything of it when that happened, because girls always used to whisper shit in Clint's ear. Clint, you see, is what one might call "pretty." And when you're Clint, and you're pretty, sometimes women will come up to you at random and say things to you that aren't for public consumption. Not being conventionally pretty and all, I wouldn't know. Nothing out of the ordinary for Clint, though.

I went back to what I was doing, meaning I turned toward the bar, resumed a somewhat disjointed conversation with Clint's peanut-laden brother-in-law, and continued trying to find the solution at the bottom of my pint glass. That was when he began jamming his tongue down her throat.

Clint, that is. And the girl on the receiving end of Clint's toxicity was not the waddling whisperer, but some poor bastard's bride-to-be, complete with tiara, veil, and all the other crap women wear at bachelorette parties. They'd scanned the bar for the "prettiest" guy they could find, settled on Clint, then sent the bride over to open her mouth and accept her sore. This was a few years ago. I'm assuming it's fully developed now.

We host bachelorette parties all the time at the club. They do scavenger hunts at these things. They pin a list to the bride's chest. The list is made up of all the things she's "required" to do at the bar that night. Most of these things are wholly innocuous. Others are not. Working in clubs, you see both. Risking an STD for a Clintian tonguedown was on one of these lists. The following week, the girl was married. One would assume she wore white.

"Lemme tell you somethin," said Ray, standing at the door on another Saturday night in the city. "I'd take away their drivers' licenses and their citizenship, and I wouldn't give 'em the right to fuckin' vote. Fuck that."

"So?" I asked. "Guys have bachelor parties, right? What the fuck's the difference?"

"I don't like them either. I ever get married, I ain't havin' one."

"Why not?"

"'Cause they way they do it is all wrong," he replied. "I can see goin' out with a couple guys, maybe the wedding party or whatever, and gettin' a couple drinks, but this shit with the strippers? And these guys who take these fuckin' limos to Atlantic City? Fuck that. It's fuckin' disgusting."

"It gets a little ridiculous."

"You know what happens at these fuckin' things? You keep the list of people too loose, an' the next thing you know, twenny people show up an' the groom don' know half of 'em. Where the fuck's the fun in that?"

"I've been to those," I said, thinking about an incident in a hotel room, back in another life.

"Yeah, but the women are worse, and that's the shit I don' like. They go on and on about how bachelor parties are wrong, an' about how it ain't right to have the groom out gettin' blowjobs and handjobs an' shit from strippers, but they're out doin' the same shit, and worse."

"How?" I asked.

"Lemme tell you somethin'. You get a bunch a' guys for a bachelor party, an' you go to a titty bar and buy some lapdances, and you can't do shit. You sit there with your hands on the arms of the fuckin' chair, 'cause you ain't allowed to touch nobody. Maybe you go to the VIP or whatever, an' you can do a little more, but when you do that, you gotta spend so much it ain't even worth it. You might as well go home and bang your wife."

"Yeah."

"But these broads? They can do whatever they fuckin' want. Some guy takes his clothes off and sticks a cock in their face, and they don't have the same rules. And believe me, they're touchin'."

"Why?" I asked. "You been to a male strip place?"

"I had a friend who was a male stripper. Guy from my gym. He used to get laid at every single one of these fuckin' things, and half the time it was with the fuckin' bride."

I looked up the block, counting limousines. There were three. "Are you serious?"

"Fuck yeah, I'm serious," he replied. "Next time a limo pulls up for a bachelorette party, see if there's a guy with them. There fuckin' always is. An' you know who he is?"

"The stripper?"

"Bingo. And you watch 'em go in and out. Those motherfuckers are takin' them dirty whores back to the limo every time. Every fuckin' time. They're all the same, these pigs."

"Sounds like a great job," I offered.

"I ever get married, an' my wife says she wants one a' those things, I'll say, 'Sure, you can have one, but don't expect me to show up at the wedding.'"